Bolingbrook was recently named as one of the 50 best American cities to live in by Money magazine.

The town's ranking of 38th place in the survey, conducted every other year, is the fourth consecutive appearance on the list for the suburb. Towns with populations between 50,000 and 300,000 were considered.

Bolingbrook has come in 32nd, 43rd and 61st in the past three polls before this month's new rankings were released.

Bolingbrook's ranking this year praises longtime Mayor Roger Claar for growing the town in the past 28 years.

"When (Claar) was first appointed in 1986, he promised to bring more jobs and economic opportunity to the area," according to the town's ranking information. "He kept that vow. Claar took the town's 115,000 square feet of industrial, office, and manufacturing space, and grew it into a whopping 32 million."

Money also praised Bolingbrook's noneconomic attributes.

"Bolingbrook has a notably diverse population — this is a place where mosques and cricket fields are in equal supply," the ranking states. "Sports are big here: there are several major golf courses in the area, the girls' basketball team has won four state high school championships, and the town's Rocket Ice Arena draws youth hockey players from throughout the Chicago area."

After announcing the distinction at last week's Village Board meeting, Claar said the town does not apply to be considered for the list, and that it is an "independent observation" from "a very well-respected magazine."

"They find us, we don't find them," he said. "They call up with questions, they hang up and that's it. You have no idea what's going to happen."

Money magazine considers a variety of factors when choosing who sits where on its list, according to the publication's website.

The process begins with 781 cities of populations between 50,000 and 300,000.

That 781 is culled by eliminating cities that contain a variety of undesirable criteria, including being comprised of more than 95 percent of the same race, poor educational scores and any place situated more than an hour from an airport.

The list is further winnowed by using "a proprietary formula" to rank the remaining 100 cities by economic opportunity and jobs, housing affordability, education, crime, health, arts and leisure, ease of living and diversity.

The top 50 is eventually determined by limiting selected towns to three per state and one per county.

"There's only two cities in the state of Illinois that have been on that list for eight continuous years," Claar said last week. "That's the village of Bolingbrook and that place next door, Naperville."

That place next door was ranked 33 on this year's list, five spots ahead of Bolingbrook, and was praised for it's quality schools, safe neighborhoods and vibrant downtown.

McKinney, Texas, and Maple Grove, Minn., were voted the top two places to live in America for towns with populations between 50,000 and 300,000, according to Money.